A
woman is assisted while crossing a flooded street after the
Huayco river overflooded its banks sending torrents of mud and
water rushing through the streets in HuachipaThomson Reuters

By Mitra Taj

LIMA (Reuters) - A sudden and abnormal warming of Pacific waters
off Peru has unleashed the deadliest downpours in decades, with
landslides and raging rivers sweeping away people, clogging
highways and destroying crops in a potential sign of a global El
Nino pattern this year.

At least 62 people have died and more than 70,000 have become
homeless as Peru's rainy season has delivered 10 times as much
rainfall than usual, authorities said Friday.

About half of Peru has been declared in emergency to expedite
resources to the hardest hit areas, mostly in the north where
rainfall has broken records in several districts, said Prime
Minister Fernando Zavala.

Peru is bracing itself for another month of flooding.

A local El Nino phenomenon, the warming of surface sea
temperatures in the Pacific, will likely continue along Peru's
northern coast at least through April, said Dimitri Gutierrez, a
scientist with Peru's El Nino committee.

Local El Ninos in Peru tend to be followed by the global El Nino
phenomenon, which can trigger flooding and droughts in different
countries, said Gutierrez.

The U.S. weather agency has put the chances of an El Nino
developing in the second half of 2017 at 50-55 percent.

While precipitation in Peru has not exceeded the powerful El Nino
of 1998, more rain is falling in shorter periods of time -
rapidly filling streets and rivers, said Jorge Chavez, a general
tasked with coordinating the government's response.

"We've never seen anything like this before," said Chavez. "From
one moment to the next, sea temperatures rose and winds that keep
precipitation from reaching land subsided."

Some scientists have said climate change will make El Ninos more
frequent and intense.

In Peru, apocalyptic scenes recorded on cellphones and shared on
social media have broadened the sense of chaos.

A woman caked in mud pulled herself from under a debris-filled
river earlier this week after a mudslide rushed through a valley
where she was tending to crops.

Bridges have collapsed as rivers have breached their banks, and
cows and pigs have turned up on beaches after being carried away
by rivers.

"There's no need to panic, the government knows what it's doing,"
President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski said in a televised event, urging
people to stay clear of rivers.

In Lima, the capital, classes have been suspended and running
water has been restricted after treatment systems were clogged -
prompting a rush on bottled water that produced shortages at some
supermarkets.

The vast majority of people affected by the extreme weather are
poor, including many who built makeshift homes on floodplains
that had been dry for 20 years, said Chavez.

"There's no electricity, no drinking water...no transit because
streets are flooded," said Valentin Fernandez, mayor of the town
Nuevo Chimbote.

Chavez said Peru must rethink its infrastructure to prepare for
the potential "tropicalization" of the northern desert coast,
which some climate models have forecast as temperatures rise.

"We need more and better bridges, we need highways and cities
with drainage systems," said Chavez. "We can't count on nature
being predictable."